Kristen Allen

Kristen Allen is an Assistant Professor of Writing Studies at the Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy (ISUP) at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto and draws on her experience learning and researching in five languages to support students learning English for Academic Purposes and English as an Additional Language. She has taught at the university level for over 20 years, developing and teaching courses in Medieval Studies and History at the University of Toronto, Carlton University, and Sheridan College. She became a Writing Instructor in 2016, working one-on-one with students at the New College Writing Centre and the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre. From 2018-2019, she was a research coordinator for OCAD University's Writing Across the Curriculum Initiative. Since joining ISUP in 2022, she has taught ISP100, which cultivates academic reading and writing practices in first-year students, introducing them to Writing Studies using research-informed educational approaches. She has been published in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie, Journal of Response to Writing, and the essay collection From Learning to Love: Schools, Law, and Pastoral Care in the Middle Ages. She has served on the Executive Board of the Canadian Writing Centres Association (CWCA/ACCR). Her work will soon appear in Thinking About Writing, a forthcoming open educational textbook for multilingual international students in first-year university writing courses. Her current research interests include developing classroom applications of Critical Language Awareness, academic precarity, and using ChatGPT to foster genre awareness in first-year students.